Havent watched the Jump interview

Is it worth watching?

He does kinda shit on nbl a little heavy handedly

Perhaps fair in some peoples eyes

Goorg has been a wonderful coach over a long period of time, his teams have always been loaded, he's always been about the money.

I thin you're seeing too much in it. I didn't think he was laying the boot in.

His past comments has shown he would fancy himself to be a conduit for NBL team participating in a regional basketball super league of sorts.

He is approaching 70, the demands of coaching will be getting beyond him soon, if not already. I'm sure he wants some sort of short-season GM roll, and probably feels a role where he guides, and remunerated for, NBL teams in such a league is perfect for him.

The TLDR version

"Australia is saturated with sport and it's a hard task for the NBL to extract more revenue. Try heading into a league where (The Asian population) loves basketball and are in a position to spend. This is where the NBL should look to get more money from.

The top teams here spend big, and get top quality imports. Cam Oliver is one example, the guard from my team Myles Powell (imagine pumping tyres !!) is a gun, and equal to any top tier import in the NBL."

To be frank, if NBL teams could participate in such a com, where they could find themselves say $1.5 million each in a grant, it would boost the league so much.

I mean, if Mitch McCarron is the 14th highest paid player in the league on $300-400k, and Josh Adams the 3rd highest on $500-600k ... no one is really making hay.

Putting aside the appreciation of being the guy who coached the Boomers to our first ever Olympic medal, Goorjian has always been about himself first and foremost throughout his NBL coaching career.

I understand him being sore about the Hawks rejecting his wish for a contract extension but Goorjian has ran many teams into the ground financially with his notoriously expensive coaching program and he and the Hawks made some pretty bad big money signings like Deng Adel, Bairstow and giving Max Darling a 3 year deal and then bought him out after just one year.

Goorjian has always been happy to soak up the praise when his team owners are willing to spend like drunken sailors but gets the hell out of dodge when the inevitable financial collapse happens. His self-serving press conferences during the playoffs last season with his "I want a contract extension/but I might retire instead" crap was unedifying and I'm sure didn't help the Hawks playoff run.

He's obviously found another host to latch onto now in this East Asian Superleague and when that situation goes tits up he'll be back here in the media praising LK and the great things he's done for the NBL again just like last time.

Have to agree with Zodiac on that one. Any time he's not in the NBL he's bagging it, and trying to have us believe that CBA teams would beat NBL teams, which has been proven untrue time and time again in real world games. Some may argue the lack of imports in those games but theyre not likely to make a 70 point difference. Only a small handful of Chinese CBA players could even play in the NBL. And yet Goorjian kept saying it.

How much he had to do with the bronze medal is also up for debate. The lack of time outs when the USA turned the game around against us were quite glaring. Smacks of him letting David Barlow bring the ball up the court in the final play against Greece in 2006. These are both individual mess ups but they had real consequences. When Goorjian talks of how the team run, he has often said he was little more than a caretaker and that sounds about right to me. The unsung hero of the bronze medal remains Andrej Lemanis, who created the program that Goorjian inherited and took us from 10th in the world to perennial top four finishes. Goorjian may have been there when it happened but a lot of what got them there was brought in by Andrej, who may not have had the best career with the Bullets, but definitely created a successful Boomers program.

Andrej, who may not have had the best career with the Bullets

A solid pro bball league in east Asia featuring top teams from China and Japan is a huge commercial opportunity. Goorijan respects his pay packet and (probably) can genuinely see the $ potential there. It is not diplomatic for him to say standards in his league are low and teams uncompetitive in a global context.

I got around to watching the interview and he never really says the Asian teams are better than the NBL teams here. He said the word "better" in reference to them being better than Aussie fans think, and said that the top teams in Asia would be a great match against a United in Melbourne, which was the example he used. He has in the past said disparaging, kinda two faced things about the league but that wasnt what was happening here.

He has just said he's in a much better place where he gets appreciated as boomers coach, Myles powell is cotton on steroids and Andrew Nicholson, a guy who struggles to make americups would bully any nbl post after last season playing 6’7 centres in Kbl.

I suspect the bullets and SEM might be looking for a new coach by next season if things don't pan out. Both ready made teams.

Look beyond 'the jump'

Lemanis was great, didn't have the cattle at bullets due lack of spending and relying on to many average Australians, probably his fault there.

Agree with ME's assessment of the bronze medal.
It's a hypothetical, but I believe Australia could've possibly won the USA game, or at the very least, lost by much less had Lemanis been coach of that Olympic tournament.
The absence of timeouts during the USA's run was a blatant coaching error that defied logic.

Kind of baffles me why he'd be chasing those dollars in Asia at his age too.
You imagine with all his on court success, that at this stage in his career, lifestyle & family would be the priority.

In terms of basketball in Australia compared to Asia, it's not a valid comparison given the diversity and volume of pro sports in this country.
Basketball simply doesn't have the domestic market here to be on the same scale as Asian countries which don't have rugby, cricket, AFL, soccer etc all concurrent or over-lapping to the extent that they do here.

BTW, how much longer is his boomers coaching gig? Is it into the next Olympics?

There's been calls on here for Roth to be next.
I agree that he'd be excellent strategically and culturally, except that idealy IMO, I'd prefer an Australian at the reins.
In which case, is Bevo available......or, and some would probably disagree, but I'm really liking Adam Ford lately.
The way he has Cairns playing, and importantly, the culture he's generated there is commendable.
Shannon Scott spoke highly of him as a person as well as a coach, and things like the player welfare program that Cairns have, with Ford's open door policy, speaks to his interpersonal skills which significantly compliments his game tactical application.

I'd be interested to know the number of sepak takraw (kick volleyball), badminton and table-tennis players in Asian countries - I would expect more to play those sports than we have playing the various ball sports

I think Caporn would be front runner but roth would also be good.

Forde should have a long coaching career ahead of him. I've thought he's done reasonably well over his first 2 and a bit seasons.

Should be considered for a Boomers assistant role to give him exposure to the FIBA scene.

>>I'd be interested to know the number of sepak takraw (kick volleyball), badminton and table-tennis players in Asian countries - I would expect more to play those sports than we have playing the various ball sports<<

In terms of raw nùmbers, highly likely, but I'm wondering that from a commercial/money/TV/sponsorship standpoint, that the sports we have here are well established here as competitors to basketball having a bigger commercial market, more so than the sports in Asia.
I could be wrong, but there has to be some reason why they throw such huge dollars into Asian basketball relative to what the NBL does

Agreed ME , never forgiving him with that Barlow decision against Greece or Barlow either , boy goorj has and always will be about the money and leaves folded clubs in his wake

Lack of respect here for the GOAT coach

Owners make the spending decisions, not coaches

Goorj's clubs were hardly the only ones that went belly up in the tumultuous 90's and 00's

Some of his Kings players being shoehorned as Boomers was sickening though.

(Goorj may be GOAT in NBL terms but he isn't in the international game.)

"There's been calls on here for Roth to be next.
I agree that he'd be excellent strategically and culturally, except that idealy IMO, I'd prefer an Australian at the reins."

I'd lean towards Scott Roth at this point. He's turned a team of scrubs into an NBL powerhouse. If he can overachieve with our top flight Boomers then who knows what is next for them.

LV, when Goorjian is the coach of 4 teams that end up going broke it seems to be a pattern and we can't blame four separate groups of ownership for that when there is a common denominator. He is a great coach and has achieved a lot but it'd be foolish to think he's had nothing to do with financial issues at the teams he's coached.

Theres probably a bit more to it than just that. The way I see it he's been bought in to turn struggling clubs around that already have financial questions. He would have asked them to spend more to get a better team but that spend did not translate to sponsorship or bums on seats. I dont think it's fair to level the decline of clubs on him. Its not like he's bled out powerhouses.

That may be true in the second half of his coaching career (Illawarra, South Dragons, Sydney) but certainly wasn't the case during the Magic/Titans decade, Goorjians rosters then were always high priced and buying up top talent.

The fact every NBL team he's coached has folded at the time he was coaching them, bar Illawarra who are hanging by a thread, is hardly a coincidence.

Every team in Victoria Bar the Tigers folded, including all the ones Goorj had nothing to do with

Geelong were pushed out, Giants 1 merged, Fiddes Giants lasted 2 years.

Titans folded at the same time Seamus saved the Tigers who were themselves very close to going under.

You can't pin the Tim Johnston fire-power dramas on Goorj

South Dragons were about Mark Cowan getting sick of the NBL, and again, Seamus McPeake announced publicly he was considering pulling out the Tigers that same year

Besides the idea that a coach- an employee- is to blame for a business going under is a strange idea in itself

"Goorj coached all these teams who folded" sounds compelling but not sure it survives critical scrutiny

I think the point is that goorg line ups always cost a lot of money, he has never worked with a cairns budget, left Illawarra as soon as he new they had to go back budget minimisation.

So yes as coach he didn't send them broke but he knew how to spend owners coin, and not only on players, he had good trainers and physios as well.

Again still excellent coach and I found a very good person.

ME
>>I'd lean towards Scott Roth at this point. He's turned a team of scrubs into an NBL powerhouse. If he can overachieve with our top flight Boomers then who knows what is next for them<<

I don't agree with the term scrubs, as scrubs couldn't perform this well with a good coach or not. But I completely agree with your point.
The way Roth maximises and enhances individuals and created a system for those individuals to perform at their best as a cohesive unit is exceptional
Last night in Perth was a great example.

Everything he's done in Tasmania is exactly consistent with both the culture and team-based, defensive, ball-movement style that is indicative of Boomers basketball.
So yeah, he'd be an ideal coach for our national team.

I liked he interview and it made me really wish that we as the NBL could take a side or two over to this east Asia champions league and compete... I'd love to have them come over here for away ties too, that could really help push the sport to more prominence in Australia

I'm just not sure about the rules and having players sin binned for 5 minutes

The problem with NBL getting into Asian competitions is the Asian clubs know from prior experience how lop-sided it will be, so there is resistance to opening that up to be dominated.

There was resistance to letting Australia into Asia for international comp, but FIBA basically said it's happening so deal with it. The fact the Boomers have won so easily even with teams that have mostly mid-range NBL players certainly won't have helped Asian clubs hesitancy.

Australia joined the confederation in 2017 yet the NBL winners are still not invited to the FIBA Asia Champions Cup. That's racist.

I agree PW, Asia has this Asia Championship Cup and they never invite Australian and New Zealand teams.

I can't see an Asia style EuroLeague here in Australia. The talent in Asia isn’t good enough and it’s probably not worth playing unless Fiba include NBL clubs to their Fiba Intercontinental Cup. That’s where Fiba are racist, just make it happen.

"The talent in Asia isn't good enough"

One of the ways it gets better is to continuously expose yourself to a higher calibre of opponent.

Seems counter productive to not utilise a resource on your door steps to get better...

Maybe, but if you're a club that holds prestige in the competition you play in, you might not want to damage that in the eyes of supporters and sponsors by getting flogged.

not worth playing unless Fiba include NBL clubs to their Fiba Intercontinental Cup.